Instagram Hit With Lawsuit Over Terms Of Service Change

A class action lawsuit against Instagram has been filed in San Francisco federal court, following user outrage regarding the mobile photo sharing app’s changed Terms of Service.

This appears to be the first civil lawsuit filed as a result of Instagram service term changes, Reuters reports.

The new Terms of Service agreement included clauses that referred to the company’s new powers to sell users’ photos without warning or compensation, reported RT. New clauses also said that users waived their rights to participate in class-action lawsuits against the company.

A strong backlash, including a blizzard of news coverage, made Instagram relent and issue a statement of apology. The company agreed to reword the terms and delete some of the more controversial language.

Instagram did, however, retain the clause forbidding arbitration as well as ads with user content.

The lawsuit was filed by the San Diego-based law firm Finkelstein & Krinsk on behalf of Instagram user Lucy Funes and others. The plaintiffs in the suit claim that Instagram breached their contract with users as the only way to get out of the terms is to deactivate the service altogether.

This controversial issue has also caused many users to switch to other services which are similar to Instagram such as Yahoo!’s Flickr which released the new mobile app for iOS with build in vintage filters to rival with Instagram prior to the changes of terms and conditions by Instagram. Flickr also started offering it’s user three months of free Flickr Pro service to take advantage of this situation.

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